How to Chat Online

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The internet has given rise to an entirely new form of communication: the online chat. Chatting allows you to talk to your friends, family, or complete strangers in real-time, and the number of people that chat online is enormous. There are a variety of different ways you can connect with other people to chat, mostly dependent on the type of chat you are looking for. Whether you're checking in with your grandmother or meeting random strangers, chatting requires a certain amount of responsibility.

Determine who you want to chat with. If you're just planning on chatting with friends and family, you'll have different needs than if you want to chat with a community or with strangers. The individuals whom you plan to chat with will help you decide which chat platform(s) to go with.

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Use direct chat services to talk with friends and family. If you plan on doing a lot of one-on-one or group chats with you friends and family, you'll want a program or service that allows you to easily connect with them. Chances are everyone you know has at least one of the following chat programs or services available to them:

Facebook - Facebook is a social networking site that has also turned into a popular chat service. This is a great chat program that most of your friends and family members likely have access to. You can chat through the website on your computer or use the Facebook Messenger app to chat on the go.

Skype - Skype is one of the most popular chat programs in the world, and has millions of users. Skype is available for Windows Mac, Linux, and virtually any mobile device. Skype recently absorbed MSN Messenger. You can use Skype to video chat as well as text chat, and you can create group chats.

Mobile messaging apps - If you spend most of your time on your mobile device, you probably want to chat using it. There are a variety of popular messaging and chat programs available for mobile devices. These include Snapchat, Kik, and WhatsApp. Creating accounts for these apps is free.

Use browser-based chats to talk with strangers. There are tons of websites that offer chat services, many of which are aimed at pairing strangers with each other in one-on-one chats. Many of these services offer video chats with strangers as well.

Chatroulette and Omegle are two of the most popular services. You will not have any control over who you chat with. If you have a webcam installed, you can use it for video chat on these sites.

There are a lot of anonymous chat rooms available through website services as well. Yahoo! Chat, Tinychat, Spinchat, and many more offer anonymous chat rooms dedicated to a variety of interests.

Use a dedicated chat client to connect with communities.Internet Relay Chat (IRC) is one of the oldest forms of online chatting around, and is home to thousands of communities dedicated to nearly every subject conceivable. IRC can be a little daunting to new users but it is a very powerful chat protocol that allows you to join countless servers and even transfer files between users.

The most popular IRC client is mIRC. You can also use a chat consolidation program like Trillian or Pidgin to connect to IRC servers.

Know the need for "netiquette".Netiquette refers to your interactions with other anonymous users on the internet. Since the internet allows anonymous communication, there is a significant amount of vitriol out there. The number one rule of netiquette is to simply be polite. Without netiquette, the internet will quickly devolve into a completely toxic community filled with trolls and personal attacks.

Treat the person you are chatting with as real. Remember, there's another person at the other end of your chat conversation, and what you say can significantly impact someone. Think about how you would talk to someone in person before sending a message.

Greet people when chatting. A common courtesy is to say "Hello" to the chat room you enter or the person your message. This is especially important in chat rooms, as not everyone will notice when new people enter. Saying a greeting will help break the ice and make the chat room a little more welcoming.

Don't spam the chat. "Spam" in chat refers to the act of constantly sending messages to the chat room. Avoid sending messages in rapid succession, and avoid quick, short responses every few seconds. Take some time to formulate your response, and everyone in the chat room will thank you.

Use conventional capitalization. WRITING IN ALL CAPITAL LETTERS IS CONSIDERED SHOUTING in the world of online chatting, and will be met with derision and scorn. You will likely be ignored or even kicked from the chat room. Save capitalization for single words or phrases that you really need to emphasize.

Treat others with the respect you expect. This really applies to everything in life, but is the only way you can expect to have a good conversation online. If you aren't treating other chatters with the respect you expect for yourself, you'll likely be ignored.

Learn to properly use shorthand. There are endless variations and implementations of internet shorthand, depending largely on the person and the community. Communities develop their own "dialect" over time, and using this dialect is a way of fitting in. Improperly trying to apply shorthand can make you appear as an outsider in that community.

Fit your grammar to the situation. If you're chatting with your boss, you're probably going to use different grammar than when you're chatting with your best friend. Make sure you take the recipient into account when you are formulating your responses.

Protect your identity. Your personal information should be considered highly-sensitive material when dealing with people online. Pick a user name other than your real name (unless you are comfortable with the other person or community). Protect information that could be connected back to you:

Banking information

Social security number

Age, location, school or workplace

Anything which could, in turn, be connected directly to you (such as an email address containing your real name)

When chatting with a webcam, make sure there isn't anything personally identifiable in the frame. You might be surprised how easily people can spot things like an address on an envelope or a high school picture.

Learn how to avoid trolls. Trolls are people who say things to intentionally get a rise out of others. They also often rely on vicious personal attacks. Trolls can make chats difficult, and can trick you into divulging information you shouldn't. Learn how to spot trolls, and avoid falling into their traps. The best way to deal with a troll is to ignore it; responses of any kind only feed the troll.

Meet someone in real life only when you are completely comfortable. You may get asked to meet up in real life from time to time. You should only agree to this if you are comfortable meeting a stranger, and such meetings should only occur in a safe, public location.

Make sure to tell a friend or family when and where you are meeting the person.

Act as if everything you do or say online is being recorded. Treat every interact as if it can be pulled out later and used in the most unpalatable way imaginable.

Almost all chat services will save a copy of your chat log and IP address in case the authorities subpoena them for a copy. Keep this in mind when you consider engaging in illegal activity through a chat program.

You enter in your user and password, and if you have 2-fa login enabled then you need to enter a code sent to your phone number (2-fa is two factor login, most chatting/social media has that these days).

Find a contributor first (a great place to look is the Forums). Look for an active Contributor, then head back to wikiHow and search the name. Once the user page pops up, click "Talk" or Talk Page" and scroll to the bottom. Ask your question there, and the person will respond soon! You should look for the most recently posted things to get a person who is hopefully still online.

About This Article

wikiHow is a “wiki,” similar to Wikipedia, which means that many of our articles are co-written by multiple authors. To create this article, 25 people, some anonymous, worked to edit and improve it over time. This article has also been viewed 107,902 times.